Conditions Governing Access
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Conditions Governing Use
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
UCLA Catalog Record ID
Preferred Citation
Processing Information
Biographical / Historical
Scope and Content
Organization and Arrangement
Existence and Location of Copies
Related Material
Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Title: Wanda Coleman papers
Creator:
Coleman, Wanda
Identifier/Call Number: LSC.2282
Physical Description:
75.2 linear feet
(182 boxes, 2 record cartons, and 1 flat box)
Physical Description:
56 linear feet
(44 unprocessed record cartons, 4 unprocessed flat boxes, 1 unprocessed oversize record carton, 2 unprocessed oversize boxes,
1 unprocessed document box)
Physical Description:
168 audiovisual carriers
(157 audiocassettes, 6 videocassettes, 5 records)
Physical Description:
101 born-digital carriers
(69 optical discs, 32 floppy disks)
Date (inclusive): 1960-2013
Abstract: Wanda Coleman was born on November 13, 1946 and grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. Coleman's
poetry
is widely anthologized and published, and her
poetry
collection
Bathwater Wine received the 1999 Lenore Marshall
Poetry
Prize. In addition to her poetic career, Coleman was also successful across genres. She had a well-known column in the
Los Angeles Times and won an Emmy for her writing on
Days of Our Lives. The collection contains work produced by Coleman between 1960 and 2013, including manuscripts and drafts of her published
poetry
and prose, journalism, writing for film and television, and spoken word recordings, as well as many unpublished writings.
In addition, there is a wealth of correspondence with major literary figures and institutions, activist materials, and ephemera
relating to Coleman's professional and personal life.
Physical Location: Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Language of Material: Materials are primarily in English, some materials in Dutch and Italian.
Conditions Governing Access
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Originals in box 184 not available for consultation due to poor physical condition, use digitized versions only.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
CONTAINS UNPROCESSED DIGITAL/AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS: Digital/audiovisual materials are not currently available for access and
will require further processing and assessment. If you have questions about this material please email AskLSC@library.ucla.edu.
Conditions Governing Use
Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained
by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue
the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Purchased from Austin Straus, 2015.
UCLA Catalog Record ID
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Wanda Coleman papers (Collection 2282). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research
Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Processing Information
Mold remediation was performed on Box 185.
Damaged material in Box 184 was digitized for preservation purposes.
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user
interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides
a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive
processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating
existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit
feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form
located on our website:
Report Problematic Content and Description in UCLA's Library Collections and Archives.
Biographical / Historical
Wanda Coleman was born on November 13, 1946 in Watts and raised in South Central Los Angeles. When she was eighteen, she married
her first husband, Jerry Coleman, with whom she had two children, Anthony and Luanda Tunisia. Coleman retained custody of
the children when she and Jerry divorced in 1969, and struggled to survive and write as a single mother. She worked as an
editor for
Players, a conscious Black gentleman's magazine, from 1972-1974, and in the mid 1970s, she moved to Hollywood, where she became an
active participant in the spoken word and
poetry
communities, penning works for Studio Watts and becoming a fixture at Beyond Baroque in Venice. In 1977, she published a
chapbook,
Art in the Court of the Blue Fag, followed by a full-length collection of poems,
Mad Dog Black Lady (1979) with Black Sparrow Press, beginning a publishing relationship that would last for over thirty years and produce twelve
books in various genres. Her third child, Ian, with her second husband Stephen Grant, was born in 1978. Coleman was also an
acclaimed performance artist known for her impactful readings. In the 1980s, her presence in the LA spoken word scene led
her to collaborate with seminal punk figures such as Exene Cervenka (X) and Lydia Lunch, and she worked with New Alliance
records to release a number of solo and split recordings. Coleman attended Valley Junior College and Cal State L.A., and went
on to teach at UCLA extension, Cal State Long Beach, Naropa, and Loyola Marymount University, where she held the Fletcher
Jones chair in literature and writing. Prolific across genres, Coleman wrote
poetry
, short stories, novels, nonfiction, and plays, as well as scripts for film and television, winning an Emmy for her work on
on
Days of Our Lives in 1976 and working as a featured columnist for the
Los Angeles Times. Coleman is one of the most widely anthologized and published poets of her generation, appearing in prestigious collections
such as
Postmodern American
Poetry
: A Norton Anthology
and
The Oxford Anthology of African-American
Poetry
. Her
poetry
collection
Bathwater Wine received the 1999 Lenore Marshall
Poetry
Prize,
Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her honors include a Guggenheim, an NEA fellowship, and the
Poetry
Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award. With her husband of thirty years, poet and visual artist Austin Straus, she
hosted "The
Poetry
Connexion" on KPFK from 1981-1994. She died November 22, 2013. In November of 2015, the Ascot branch of the Los Angeles public
library in Watts, where Coleman spent many of her formative years reading and writing, was renamed the Wanda Coleman Branch
in her honor.
Scope and Content
The collection chronicles Coleman's entire career (1960-2013), and includes many materials that provide insight into her process,
such as meticulously kept records of submissions, publications, and rejections; multiple drafts and revisions of poems, stories,
and articles with Coleman's edits; correspondence with John Martin at Black Sparrow Press regarding major works; a wealth
of correspondence with major literary figures such as E. Ethelbert Miller and Sesshu Foster; many activist materials; flyers
and other ephemera related to Coleman's public performances and other "gigs"; teaching materials; photographs; recordings;
and many unpublished writings including a novel, a collection of newer short stories, and screenplays.
Organization and Arrangement
- Series 1: Correspondence, 1960-2013
- Series 2: Works by Wanda Coleman, 1961-2012
- Subseries 2.1:
Poetry
, 1968-2010
- Subseries 2.2: Fiction, 1975-2012
- Subseries 2.3: Nonfiction, 1973-2012
- Subseries 2.4: Spoken Word, TV, Film, and Theater, 1970-2011
- Subseries 2.5: Juvenilia and Visual Art, 1961-1998
- Series 3: Gigs/PR, 1969-2007
- Series 4: Memorabilia, 1963-2012
Collection is primarily ordered chronologically.
Existence and Location of Copies
Digital reproductions of materials in Box 184 are available for viewing in the Library Special Collections reading room.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
African American women poets -- 20th century -- Archives.
African American women authors -- 20th century -- Archives.
Coleman, Wanda -- Archives